Gmail Ops Request Triage with OpenAI, Airtable & Discord

Instantly triage Gmail ops requests with OpenAI, Airtable, and Discord

This n8n workflow monitors your Gmail ops inbox, uses OpenAI to classify and de-duplicate requests against Airtable, and then keeps everyone aligned by posting updates to Discord and confirming by email.

What this workflow does

• Checks Gmail every minute when a new unread email arrives.
• Normalizes incoming messages into structured fields (request ID, timestamps, requester, subject, and message text).
• Rejects incomplete requests (e.g., missing sender or too-short message). For invalid emails, it alerts your team in Discord and emails the requester asking for more detail.
• Uses OpenAI with an Airtable lookup tool to determine whether the message is an ops request, extract a summary/category/priority/assignee, and detect duplicates.
• Handles duplicates safely: if OpenAI flags a duplicate, it posts a duplicate notice to Discord and skips creating a new Airtable record.
• Creates new Airtable records for genuine, non-duplicate ops requests (adds an Open entry), posts full request details to Discord, and emails the requester a confirmation.
• Runs a weekly digest every Monday at 09:00: pulls all open Airtable requests, has OpenAI write a short recap, then posts it to Discord and emails it to the ops address.

Use cases

• Operations teams want faster request triage without manually sorting Gmail threads.
• SaaS operators need consistent categorization, priority, and assignee extraction for ops tickets.
• Teams maintaining an Airtable “Open requests” pipeline want automatic duplicate detection.
• Managers benefit from a Monday morning digest summarizing every open Airtable item.

Technical details

• Gmail trigger (polls every minute for unread messages) and Gmail send for confirmations/clarifications.
• OpenAI for classification, summary/category/priority/assignee extraction, and duplicate detection using an Airtable lookup tool.
• Airtable for creating and retrieving “Open” request records (weekly digest source).
• Discord for alerts: invalid email notices, new request posts, and duplicate notices.
• Core n8n blocks include if, set, and summarize to route logic and generate weekly recaps.
• Setup requires a Gmail OAuth2 credential and an OpenAI API credential (plus choosing the chat model).